Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) president has long proclaimed that mixed martial arts (MMA) would be the biggest sport in the world due to the fact that people simply love face-punching, and most people would gravitate to a fight breaking out in the middle of another sporting match to see it all unfold.
And throughout his tenure with UFC, White — with financial assistance from the Fertitta brothers — has brought MMA into he mainstream, getting closer and closer each day to fulfilling his prophecy.
And longtime boxing personality Larry Merchant agrees with White on one point: People are simply drawn to street fights, and someway, somehow, UFC has found the way to market it, as he recently told Fight Hub TV.
“I think it connects to me with the short attention span that if you were walking down the street and saw a good street fight, you’d probably stop and take a look at it and they found a way to market that and that is exciting. I think there is some skilled involved, of course, as well s strength, will and all the rest of that. But, unless your really seeped in that, something tells you that something is going to happen. And in boxing, or prizefighting as I prefer to call it, that may not be necessarily true, that something may be closer to nothing.”
And it’s a very lucrative business, indeed.
As far as the upcoming crosser matchup between Conor McGregor and Floyd Mayweather — which is set to go down on Aug. 24, 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada — he’s not a big fan of it, saying at one time to “just shoot him” when talks began.
To learn everything you need to know about the upcoming “Mayweather vs. McGregor” boxing extravaganza click here.
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